Each is working the same side of the street by telling us how foolish mankind is by postponing the inevitable.
In fact, a little ol’ South Georgia country gal named Janisse Ray ought to toss her two cents into this extremely vital subject. She is the author of “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.” In her book of growing up beside her father’s junkyard with only love and the bare necessities to sustain them, she tells of her growing love of the forests outside that junkyard and the vanishing of flora and fauna.
Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning columnist, faults U.S. and world leaders on the creeping disasters we face, namely the economy and climate change—the latter far more serious and yet regulated to the back burner, so to speak, turned down extremely low.
In a sense, frogs seem to have more intelligence than humans. As the water gradually heats, a frog will hop out. Despite all the scientific findings and warnings—melting icebergs and glaciers, the loss of endangered species, unusual weather patterns—a ho-hum attitude prevails among those who could make a difference.
“And right now,” says Krugman, “both the economic and the environmental frogs are sitting still while the water gets hotter.”
President Obama, for instance, seems willing to accept small victories here and there rather than go for broke and pound the bully pulpit and shout to the congregation: “By damn! This is where I take my stand! You’re either with me or against me!”
If that sounds too much like George W. Bush, at least Obama would be on the side of the angels.
And why have the wild Soay sheep in the St. Kilda archipelago off the western coast of Scotland gotten 25 percent smaller over the past 25 years? Tim Coulson of Imperial College London says it’s not that evolution has been repealed, it’s just that smaller sheep are more able to survive in the gradually warmer weather. Also, the harsh winters have grown shorter and milder.
As far as the economy is concerned, most forecasters say signs point to a “jobless recovery” and will be as high, according to the Wall Street Journal, in 2010 as it is now.
That won’t cut the mustard. What’s needed, says Krugman is another stimulus package to kick start the first one which was too small to do the job.
But a faltering economy is nothing compared to getting action on climate change.
“Put it this way:” Krugman says, “if the consensus of the economic experts is grim, the consensus of the climate experts is utterly terrifying. … {it’s} utter catastrophe, a rise in temperatures that will totally disrupt life as we know it, if we continue along our present path. How to head off that catastrophe should be the dominant policy issue of our time.”
Its almost as though Krugman were echoing Janisse Ray who wrote ten years ago:
“In the midst of new uncertainties in the world, including global economics and a frenzy of technology, we look around and see that the landscape that defined us no longer exists or that its form is altered so dramatically we don’t recognize it as our own. Animals that adapted as we adapted to place dwindle and die out. The rivers that have been lifelines are polluted by radioactive waste. Where do we turn? To what then do we look for consolation and hope?”
Sad to say, if you’re out of work for weeks, months or even years, you can lose your homes, savings, cars, sometimes even hope. But if we lose a planet, that’s all she wrote, folks.
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